A TIME TO SPEAK
Vol. IV:6 (No. 42)
June 2004 - Sivan-Tammuz 5764
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Webster: "Dramatis Personae --the characters
or actors in a drama"
In the drama of Israel there are many players
and would be players. Too many of those have cast themselves in the wrong
roles. For example, the Quartet wants to be Playwright with its Roadmap,
Director of Israel's fate, and Scene-mover to rearrange the map of the Land
of Israel. [Issues 23, 28, 29]
One instrument in the Quartet is the United
Nations, personified in Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He asks, in his ever-dulcet
tones, "Can the whole world be wrong and only
Israel right?" He responds
to himself, "I don't
think so."
Among other things that Kofi Annan does not
think:
1] that there is anything untoward, much less
illegal, when a bloc of UN member states pursues the destruction of another
member state, to the applause of most of the audience
2] that there is anything amiss when UN troops
in Lebanon abet terrorists who infiltrate Israel, abduct and murder Israeli
soldiers, and Mr. Annan himself suppresses the evidence
3] that UNRWA errs when it permits its "refugee
camps" to be bases for recruiting and training terrorists, and allows terrorists
use of its facilities and even its ambulances [Issue 17, 31]
4] that UNRWA Director Peter Hansen and Special
Middle East Envoy Terje Roed-Larsen misuse their office when they spread
lies and slanders about Israel in order to promote their own particular aversions
5] that the UN squanders funds when it spends
millions of dollars to print and disseminate anti-Israel propaganda and
hold "Palestine" festivals
6] that notice should be taken of UN personnel's
peculation with billions of dollars entrusted to it for the Iraq Oil-for-Food
Program.
7] that the Security Council is remiss in its
duty when it formally declares that it will ignore the genocidal horrors
that the government of the Sudan inflicts on its own subjects.
8] that it is incongruous for the government
of the Sudan to be elected as a member of the UN's body for the protection
of Human Rights
9} that he himself ought to respond when the
Pygmy people of Africa appeal for his protection from cannibal neighbors
who are slaughtering them as livestock
9] that it is bizarre for him to preside over
a conference on anti-Semitism held at the global epicenter of anti-Semitism,
and opine that "Jews
everywhere must feel that the UN is their home".
* * * * * * *
The ICRC [International Committee of the Red
Cross], based in Switzerland, is a principal player among Professional Humanitarians.
It bestows official recognition and membership status on organizations
comparable to the Red Cross that use other emblems, such as the Muslim
Red Crescent, Persian Red Lion, and Russian Red Star.
Since 1949, it has denied this recognition to
Israel's Magen David Adom [Red Shield of David]. This denial is more than
a refusal of status and equality. It is a refusal of protection. Hospitals,
ambulances and medical workers identified with a Red Cross, Red Crescent,
Red Lion or Red Star are under the safeguard of "international humanitarian
law" and attacks on them are deemed criminal. Hospitals, ambulances, and
medical workers identified with a Red Shield of David have no safeguard.
Thus the ICRC shelters PLO ambulances, that are often used to transport terrorists,
but not Magen David Adom ambulances that rush to help the victims of terrorism.
Senior officials of the ICRC bring forth one
excuse after another for this anomaly. The season's reasons for rejecting
Israel were set forth by Francois Bugnion, Director for International Law.
1] There might not be "a consensus in favor" of the Magen David Adom among the almost 200
members of the ICRC.
[Comment: The membership includes states dedicated to
or complaisant about the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews.]
2] The PLO would have to give its approval,
though it is not a member.
[Comment: Why should emergency medical care for the
victims of PLO terrorism require the approval of the perpetrator?]
3] The ICRC was addressing the subject in 2000,
but dropped it because violence broke out in the region. M. Bugnion reports
that "some number" of member governments feel that because of
that violence "the
time was not right to discuss this issue".
[Comment: The violence is caused by the Oslo War, waged
by the PLO against Israelis. Of course, "some number" of governments would
oppose anything that facilitates medical care for the casualties.]
* * * * * * *
"If the reputation builds that the Saudis
take care of their friends when they leave office, you'd be surprised how
much better friends you have who are just coming into office."
-- Prince Bandar
bin-Sultan, Saudi Ambassador to the United States
Some bit players still strutting and fretting
are three score former U.S. State Department diplomats, especially those
who served in Arab capitals, many of them now on Arab payrolls. In June 2004
they published an open letter to President George W. Bush, admonishing him for
his "unqualified support" of Israel. In their view, this blunder is
"costing our country its credibility,
prestige and friends . . . ." But they offer a chance of salvation: "Our hope is that both political parties will
take heed and listen to the voices of experienced diplomats."
At almost the same time, a similar letter was
addressed to the Prime Minister of Great Britain by alumni of his always
Judeophobic Foreign Office. The signer of this epistle also draw a good part
of their incomes from petrodollars.
The former Foggy Bottomfeeders interpret as
"unqualified support" for Israel a current policy that:
1] excludes Israel from a place the international
War on Terror
2] insists on carving a PLO state out of the
heart of the Land of Israel
3] endorses a plot by Israel's own prime minister
to abandon strategically vital areas to PLO rule, after rendering them judenrein
4] refuses to honor a pledge to place the U.S.
embassy to Israel in Jerusalem, as repeatedly mandated by the U.S. Congress
5] subjects Israelis and American Jews alike
to the snappish commands of Condoleeza Rice
6] takes Yasser Arafat under its protection
To the signatories and their British counterparts,
the sinful folly of their governments is not openly accommodating Arab demands
for the Death of Israel.
In their former careers they achieved policy
failures costly to their own countries and to the Middle East. But they
achieved success in providing for themselves by way of Arab petro-dollars.
[Issue 12, 25]
The experience of these diplomats is examined in "The Arabists and
the Anti-Zionists," by Joel Mowbray, who regularly reports on the U.S. Department
of State. From FrontPageMagazine, 5 May 2004:
Reflecting the perverse logic that has guided
the U.S. State Department for decades, sixty former diplomats have written
an open letter to President Bush denouncing the current administration's
"unabashed support" for the sole democracy in the Middle East: Israel.
The hyperbolic screed, released this week, is
chock-full of gross overstatements and pure myth.
Yet far more important -- and what the media
will almost surely overlook -- is the stench of bias emanating from almost
all of the signers, particularly from the man who organized the effort,
former Ambassador Andrew Killgore, who served in Qatar from 1977-1980.
The two-page letter follows the same basic script
that has been used by the U.S. Foreign Service more or less since Israel
achieved its independence in 1948: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at
the core of the problems in the Middle East. [. . . .]
[M]any of them have made their golden years
truly 'golden' indeed, courtesy of the deep pockets of the Arab nations
in which they formerly were stationed.
Killgore, the moving force behind the letter,
is co-founder and publisher of the journal Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, that denounces tolerance for the mere existence
of Israel.
* * * * * * *
A person who finances a theatrical production
is known as an "angel". The European Union has been an angel for Israelis
undermining their own countries. [Issue 12, 26, 35] It subsidizes Yossi
Beilin to funnel their funding of the PLO, and Switzerland financed the
show put on for his pernicious "Geneva Accords". (Perhaps the Swiss deemed
this an appropriate use for the money they confiscated from the bank accounts
of Jews who died in the Holocaust.)
The EU also provided funds for The Four Mothers,
the women who purloined the affectionate title for Israel's biblical Matriarchs.
Their agitation against Israel holding a terror-barrier security zone at
the Lebanese border did much to precipitate the ignominious flight that endangers
Israel's population and encourages its enemies. A chief of Hezbollah expects
more of the same kind of help:
"We have great patience in our war with
the Jews. For just as their "Four Mothers" [movement] came and got them out
of Lebanon, soon a few thousand of them will come to their public squares
and demand that they leave the occupied territories [sic]. In the end, we
will win."
Other Israeli circles of similar ilk also enjoy foreign subsidies.
From "Jewish Spies Against Israel," by David Bedein, Israel Resource Review, 16 May 2004:
This week, the Israeli 'Peace Now' organization
revealed that it has been conducting aerial surveillance of Israeli Jewish
communities in Judea, Jerusalem and Samaria in order to determine the extent
of settlement expansion. At the same time, the Israeli Knesset Parliamentary
Interior Committee held a special session to discuss foreign government
funding of Israeli leftwing movements.
Documents shared with the Knesset Interior Committee
confirmed that the Peace Now organization received a budget in the amount
of 50,000 Euros from the government of Finland to conduct intelligence activities
in Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, the Golan, Gaza and Jerusalem.
The Knesset Committee examined a Peace Now grant
application to the government of Finland that indicated how Peace Now intended
to use the grant. This included regular bi-monthly ground surveys to be conducted
with the purpose of documenting the numbers of empty houses in settlements
and ongoing construction in settlements. This work engages tens of volunteers,
who travel around the West Bank in cars (armored if possible) tracking developments.
[. . . .]
Despite its insistence that it is an "educational
foundation" that seeks to serve the Israeli public, it is obvious that Peace
Now is far from being an indigenous Israeli organization, functioning instead
as an agent for foreign governments. In fact, it indicated in the Finnish
grant request that it also received $100,000 from the Americans and 150,000
Euros from 'European Foundations' for its 'settlement watch project'.
A spokesperson for Peace Now stated that the
'European Foundations' mentioned in their grant request to the Finnish government
were actually funds from the European Union. In other words, Peace Now
receives the bulk of its funding from other foreign European governments,
few of which have been favorable to Israel's plight in the War on Terror.
The Israel Penal Code for Espionage was distributed
to Knesset Interior Committees, and clause 3 defines 'photography of sensitive
areas of Israel for any foreign power' as an act of espionage, punishable
by ten years imprisonment if convicted. [. . . .]"
Apart from the matter of funding, the major
problem is that Peace Now documents sensitive information that can be used
to jeopardize not only Israel's public, but also its military. The Peace
Now settlement expansion maps include military installations and the maps
are featured in all PLO offices. Israeli army bases have been attacked and
Israeli soldiers killed. These are the sons and daughters of Israel drafted
to protect the country against a dangerous and heinous enemy.
Thus, Peace Now is not engaged in a simple matter
of documenting settlements; rather, the organization provides information
that can easily used against Israel. In these cases, every bit of information
counts. Everything is relevant when it comes to protecting the people of
Israel.
For instance, in late May 2002, a settlement
watch group organized by the "Christian Peace Makers Team" reported to its
e-mail list that it had successfully photographed the fence surrounding
the Carmei Tzur settlement. The CPT proudly reported
that it had shown several breaches in the fence. The next day, the CSM met
with the Fateh (Arafat's mainstream terror group) in Bethlehem. Two days
later, late at night, armed members of the Fateh infiltrated the Carmei Tzur
settlement at the precise breach that the CPT had photographed. The Fateh
used that breach to murder a civilian couple in their bed. The wife was eight
months pregnant.
The decision will now rest with Israel's legal
system whether and how to enforce the espionage clauses of the Israel Penal
Code for those organizations who choose to photograph the most sensitive
landscapes of Israel on the payroll and at the behest of foreign governments."
Thus Peace Now is not only an agent of foreign
interests, it is an accomplice to murder. It is not clear how the taxpayers
of Finland benefit from being its angel.
* * * * * * *
There is a saying that "Nations get the governments
they deserve". This is not true for Israel. For too many years past, the
civilians and the soldiers of Israel have lived and died under governments
not worthy of its citizens.
At the moment, the heads of the three major
parties are:
1] Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of theLikud Party
In office, Sharon has betrayed virtually every
principle he declared and every promise he made when out of office and/or
campaigning for office. [Issue 37, 39, 40]. He has sown contention and distrust,
and imposed senseless new stresses on a nation and people already burdened
with massive stress.
When his own party opposed his ill-considered
plan for Disengagement [that is, Unilaterial Surrender] he concocted a divisive
and costly referendum meant to prove support for him. The vote came out
60-40 percent against him. In response, he ignores the results of his own
referendum and goes on with the plan so resoundingly rejected.
He could not rally the required majority approval
from the cabinet, whose members are not appointed by him but elected leaders
of their various parties with the right to decide their own votes. So he
fired cabinet ministers for the sole offense of planning to vote against
his plan -- a tactic abhorrent by any standard of political decency.
2] Leader of the Opposition Shimon Peres of the Labor Party
In the early days of Peres's political career,
Moshe Sharett expressed his distress at the thought that Peres might ever
reach real power. Golda Meir despised him. Yitzhak Rabin described him a
perpetual schemer.
Peres managed to become Prime Minister several
times without ever winning an election. He has also held various other portfolios,
among them the Foreign Ministry. It was as Foreign Minister that he was
the arch-perpetrator of the accursed Oslo Accords, that he managed to foist
on a nation that did not want them. The most dire predictions of the disasters
to come in the wake of those Accords proved all too prescient, but Peres
still insists that "Oslo" was the right thing to do and will yet prevail.
He does not at the moment hold any ministry,
but wanders around the United States and other countries to tell the world
that Israel has no moral rights in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan. Sharon
does not dispute him on this.
3] Minister of Justice Yosef "Tommy" Lapid, head of the Shinui
[Change] Party.
Lapid is a former journalist and television
personality who got public attention as a raucous vulgarian. He launched
his political career on a campaign of contempt for and ridicule of all who
clings to any shred of Judaism, in observance, tradition, or culture.
His expressed aspiration for Israeli society
is that everyone should eat pork on Shabbat.
Wynken, Blynken and Nod
Among senior cabinet members are Mr. Foreign
Minister Sylvan Shalom, Mr. Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and Madam
Education Minister Limor Livnat.
Netanyahu and Livnat did not like the Quartet's
Roadmap. They would not vote to approve it. They would not vote to reject
it. They courageously abstained on this fateful decision, and so helped
it to pass. Netanyahu did make his abstention conditional on attaching 14
Points of his own devising. It is not clear what the 14 Points were, but
they were in any case pointless since Condoleeza Rice had ruled the terms
of the Roadmap to be "non-negotiable". The 14 Points, whatever they were,
have not been heard of since.
On Sharon's Disengagement plot, Shalom as well
as Netanyahu and Livnat first said "No". Then they said "Maybe". Then they
said "Yes, But . . . " Then they said they would Vote For It But Not Campaign
For It. First they declared that The Referendum Vote is Binding. Then they
backed Sharon in overturning it.
The sad irony is that those abroad who sincerely
believe themselves friends of Israel -- as indeed they are -- suppose that
supporting the plots of its incumbent officeholders is the same as supporting
Israel and its best interests. It is not.
* * * * * * *
And The Lord spoke to Moses saying "Send
men to scout the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelite people.
. . . .
At the end of forty days they returned
from scouting the land . . . and they made their report . . .
They spread calumnies among the Israelites
about the land they had scouted, saying "The country that we traversed and
scouted is one that devours its settlers. . . . and we looked like grasshoppers
to ourselves."
-- Numbers
13:1, 25, 32-33
Of the Twelve Scouts, only Joshua and Caleb
dissented from this majority report. Only they lived to enter the Promised
Land. And today, too, not all scouts -- not even all politicians -- are
grasshoppers. There are still some who have not given way to moral and intellectual
collapse. There are still some who will stand against what they know is wrong,
even if it means losing their posts and perquisites.
Natan Sharansky stood by his conscience at the
cost of nine years in a cell in the Soviet Gulag. He is now a minister in
the government of Israel. His explanation of his
vote on Sharon's plan is set forth in ”Sharansky Equates Withdrawal With the
Sin of the Spies," Israel National
News (Arutz Sheva), 31 May 2004:
The Government of Israel is poised to make a
historic and unprecedented decision, . . . to dismantle and destroy flowering
Jewish communities, not as the result of a comprehensive peace agreement,
but rather out of despair and fear.
This is possibly the first time this has happened
in our history since the Sin of the Spies . . . . So it doesn't matter if
it's made a week later or a week earlier; it must not be made at all! .
. . .
[Because] there is no one to talk to on the
other side, and because some of the ministers feel that the nation can't
just keep on going like this from terror attack to terror attack, they therefore
seek a 'wonder solution' with these so dangerous ramifications."
[It is] very strange, that after this referendum
-- a festival of democracy, many called it, in which the voters were allowed
to make their own decision and weren't forced to follow their leader --
and then the leader ignores the results! He [Sharon] says that he is responsible
not just for one party, but for the entire nation -- but if that's so, then
he must first of all be responsible that the democratic character of the
Jewish state be maintained. Instead, this is a blow both to the Jewish nature
and the democratic character at once.
It's important that we, those who object to
this plan, talk all the time about the ideology -- our history, the large
picture, the running away from terrorism, etc. I tried today to do this,
I even quoted the first Rashi [Arutz Sheva comment: 11th-century biblical
commentator, whose explanation to the first verse in the Torah emphasizes
the Divine bonds between the Land of Israel and the People of Israel] --
I felt that this was important, for one thing, because since the departure
of Elyakim Rubenstein [the former Attorney-General who generally participated
in Cabinet meetings], we haven't had people reading from the [religious]
sources, so I tried to do this. [. . . .]
* * * * * * *
The Ninth Day of the Month of Av in the Hebrew
calendar has from ancient times been a day of mourning and fasting.
On that date in 587 BCE, the Babylonians destroyed
Jerusalem, burnt the First Temple, and took the Jews into exile.
On that date in 70 CE, the Romans destroyed
Jerusalem, burnt the Second Temple, and drove the Jews into exile.
On that date in 1492 CE, the Jews were expelled
from Spain where they had dwelt for 1000 years.
Sharon's plan to bestow Gaza on terrorists and
Egyptians dates the completion of forcible removal of Jews form their homes
to 14 August 2005, that will fall on the Ninth of Av.
END